Probably a mistake on India's part, but the future will tell us.
We have the habit of squandering away the gains made on the battlefield on the negotiation table, famously after the 1971 war that birthed Bangladesh where thousands of square kilometers of captured territory and 93,000 POWs were given up without forcing the Pakistanis to hand over POJK and GB.
This is without considering historical examples when Islamic raiders would lose battle after battle and Hindu kings would let them go back till the day the Hindus lose and are slaughtered enmasse.
Some good things have come out of this:
* We now know that Chinese radars do not work against Indian supersonic/hypersonic missiles.
* The Indian air defense systems proved themselves by shooting down drones, missiles and aircraft.
* India has changed its soft policy on terror by considering an terror attack on Indian soil to be an act of war.
* India is going to starve them of water. The suspension of the IWT stands.
This is a temporary pause. It is Pakistan's psyche to go running to America for help each time it has been spanked by India. And once it recovers, it tries another "misadventure."
While it is in India's interest to dismember Pakistan into four parts, it is in America's interest to keep the irritant alive. The US let China grow into the behemoth that it is. And it does not want to see this being repeated again with India.
We live in interesting times.
leosanchez · 1h ago
> We have the habit of squandering away the gains made on the battlefield on the negotiation table
Do you think religion has anything to do here ? We pardoned rulers multiple times, who later came back to invade us.
sieve · 1h ago
In a way, yes. Hinduism slowly lost its warrior ethos post Buddhism and Jainism and their fetishization of non-violence.
All our books (itihasas and shastras) warn about enemies and how to deal with them. And people simply forgot all that.
As far as the opponents go, the religion doesn't really matter. Kings spared Mihirakula[1] of the Huns (who was a Shaivite Hindu) just like they spared various Islamic/Turkic raiders. And the results were as expected: betrayal and murder.
OT. I was watching Radhavallabh Tripathi's 3-episode series on Kālidāsa's Mālavikāgnimitram where he covers the politics of that era. And this point comes up. You can find it on YT (in Hindi) if you are interested.
Do you recommend any books regarding our civilization, religion ? Ideally in English, I am not a native Hindi speaker.
sieve · 11m ago
Plenty of reading material is available.
* The History and Culture of the Indian People - is a 11 volume encyclopedia edited by R.C. Majumdar. Slightly dated because of when it was published, but it is a scholarly work that will give you plenty of references to other material if you want to dig deep.
* Sri Aurobindo & Swami Vivekananda - Their collected works are available online and you can pick and choose what you want to read because their output was vast.
* Books by K S Lal - historian who wrote a lot of books on the Islamic/medieval period
* Books by Meenakshi Jain - historian
* Books by śatāvadhānī R Ganesh - his Kṣāttra - The tradition of Valor in India is quite good
* Books by Sandeep Balakrishna on the Delhi Sultanate period, Tipu Sultan etc
* Books by Pavan K. Varma
* The Ramakrishna Mission publishes many books on Hinduism. "The Essentials of Hinduism" by Swami Bhaskarananda is a concise introduction to the religion.
There are hundreds of such books. Will add another comment if I can think of them.
The best option is to read good translations (can be difficult to find ones without bias) of the upanishads, itihasas and puranas. Everything else is based on them.
sieve · 3h ago
So the ceasefire is gone. Done and dusted. Pakistan doing what it does best.
We have the habit of squandering away the gains made on the battlefield on the negotiation table, famously after the 1971 war that birthed Bangladesh where thousands of square kilometers of captured territory and 93,000 POWs were given up without forcing the Pakistanis to hand over POJK and GB.
This is without considering historical examples when Islamic raiders would lose battle after battle and Hindu kings would let them go back till the day the Hindus lose and are slaughtered enmasse.
Some good things have come out of this:
* We now know that Chinese radars do not work against Indian supersonic/hypersonic missiles.
* The Indian air defense systems proved themselves by shooting down drones, missiles and aircraft.
* India has changed its soft policy on terror by considering an terror attack on Indian soil to be an act of war.
* India is going to starve them of water. The suspension of the IWT stands.
This is a temporary pause. It is Pakistan's psyche to go running to America for help each time it has been spanked by India. And once it recovers, it tries another "misadventure."
While it is in India's interest to dismember Pakistan into four parts, it is in America's interest to keep the irritant alive. The US let China grow into the behemoth that it is. And it does not want to see this being repeated again with India.
We live in interesting times.
Do you think religion has anything to do here ? We pardoned rulers multiple times, who later came back to invade us.
All our books (itihasas and shastras) warn about enemies and how to deal with them. And people simply forgot all that.
As far as the opponents go, the religion doesn't really matter. Kings spared Mihirakula[1] of the Huns (who was a Shaivite Hindu) just like they spared various Islamic/Turkic raiders. And the results were as expected: betrayal and murder.
OT. I was watching Radhavallabh Tripathi's 3-episode series on Kālidāsa's Mālavikāgnimitram where he covers the politics of that era. And this point comes up. You can find it on YT (in Hindi) if you are interested.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihirakula
Do you recommend any books regarding our civilization, religion ? Ideally in English, I am not a native Hindi speaker.
* The History and Culture of the Indian People - is a 11 volume encyclopedia edited by R.C. Majumdar. Slightly dated because of when it was published, but it is a scholarly work that will give you plenty of references to other material if you want to dig deep.
* Sri Aurobindo & Swami Vivekananda - Their collected works are available online and you can pick and choose what you want to read because their output was vast.
* Books by K S Lal - historian who wrote a lot of books on the Islamic/medieval period
* Books by Meenakshi Jain - historian
* Books by śatāvadhānī R Ganesh - his Kṣāttra - The tradition of Valor in India is quite good
* Books by Sandeep Balakrishna on the Delhi Sultanate period, Tipu Sultan etc
* Books by Pavan K. Varma
* The Ramakrishna Mission publishes many books on Hinduism. "The Essentials of Hinduism" by Swami Bhaskarananda is a concise introduction to the religion.
There are hundreds of such books. Will add another comment if I can think of them.
The best option is to read good translations (can be difficult to find ones without bias) of the upanishads, itihasas and puranas. Everything else is based on them.
Good. It was a mistake in any case.